09/17/2013

A detail of the previously submerged side of the Costa Concordia is seen after it was lifted upright, on the Tuscan Island of Giglio, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2013. The crippled cruise ship was pulled completely upright early Tuesday after a complicated, 19-hour operation to wrench it from its side where it capsized last year off Tuscany, with officials declaring it a "perfect" end to a daring and unprecedented engineering feat. (AP Photo/Andrea Sinibaldi, Lapresse)

07/25/2013

A picture taken on July 24, 2013 shows a fireman carrying an injured young girl following a train accident near the city of Santiago de Compostela. A train hurtled off the tracks on July 24 in northwest Spain killing at least 78 passengers and injuring more than 140, an official said today, the country's deadliest rail disaster in more than 40 years. AFP PHOTO / LA VOZ DE GALICIA / XOAN A. SOLER

07/22/2013

Family members console a woman who lost her daughter in a 6.6 magnitude earthquake in Minxian county, Dingxi, Gansu province July 22, 2013. The earthquake in China's western Gansu province killed at least 89 people with hundreds injured as many homes in affected areas collapsed, state media said on Monday. REUTERS/China Daily

07/13/2013

Newly-wed Manon Parise steps over a railway track near the site where a runaway train of 72 cars carrying crude oil exploded last week, in Lac-Megantic July 13, 2013. A week after the heart of the Quebec village of Lac-Megantic was devastated in a fireball in one of the worst train accidents in Canadian history, the St. Agnes church bell rang 50 times on Saturday, once for each person believed to have died.

07/11/2013

An excavator moves villagers away from a flooded area during heavy rainfall in Yingxiu, Wenchuan county, Sichuan province, July 10, 2013. More than 300 hundred people were evacuated in Yingxiu after roads connecting the township to the outside were cut off by floods and landslides. Picture taken July 10, 2013.

06/24/2013

A haunting series of portraits of women who had limbs amputated after the Rana Plaza factory building collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh on April 24, 2013. It was the worst disaster in the history of the garment industry — 1,129 people were killed, and many others were grievously injured. Canadian photojournalist Kevin Frayer of The Associated Press photographed nine of these women in June 2013, as they recovered at Enam Medical College in Savar, Bangladesh. Their injuries are serious; the stories horrifying. As AP notes on its blog:

Arms and legs were trapped under the building rubble, forcing
rescuers with no medical training to perform amputations on the spot to
free the victims. No anesthesia was available. Some of the rescuers used
butchers knives or hacksaws to cut through the flesh and save the
trapped workers. Many of those freed are still recovering.

...

Bangladesh's government and garment manufacturers are campaigning to
close dangerous factories and to make safety a priority for the
country's most valuable export industry. But many in the government, the
industry and the rescue workers said they would not be shocked if
another terrible tragedy happened.

Mariyam, 30, worked on the 6th floor. She had her right arm amputated to free her after nearly 72 hours in the rubble.

06/22/2013

A plane carrying a wing walker crashed at the Vectren Air Show in Dayton, Ohio, and exploded into flames Saturday, killing the pilot and stunt walker instantly, authorities said. A video posted on WHIO-TV shows the plane turn upside-down as the performer sits on top of the wing (Jane Wicker, reportedly the wing walker performing, demonstrated her routine for WDTN earlier). The plane then tilts and crashes to the ground, erupting into flames as spectators screamed. The crash killed the pilot and the stunt walker instantly, authorities said.

This sequence of photos, by Thanh V Tran of The Associated Press, captures the horrific accident.

A firefighter walks over the debris of a collapsed building to remove the body of a victim in Mumbai, India, Saturday, June 22, 2013. Five persons were killed and six others injured when a four-story building collapsed Saturday in suburban Mumbai, police said.